


Gleams that Untravelled World

by billspilledquill



Category: HiGH&LOW (Movies), HiGH&LOW: the Story of S.W.O.R.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Road Trips, Terminal Illnesses, basically the red rain but the producers aren’t cowards and included smoky instead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28879098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck. It is not love.[Takeru goes missing. Hiroto and Masaki gain an unlikely ally on the road.]
Relationships: Amamiya Hiroto & Amamiya Masaki & Amamiya Takeru, Amamiya Hiroto/Smoky
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	Gleams that Untravelled World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mena_31](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mena_31/gifts).



> Dedicated to Mena_31, thank you for being a fellow Smoky fan in this dead, dead fandom.  
> This might have a sequel, but like anything I write, please don’t expect much from me.
> 
> I have only watched half of s1 + m1, half of m3 and now the red rain. Much of their past is my interpretation and fabricated canon, but hey, about 3 people is going to read this so.... enjoy?
> 
> Update: yeah this will have a sequel and I’m actually trying to write proper romance can you believe it

_I am a part of all I have met;_

_Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough_

_Gleams that untravelled world, whose_

_Margin fades_

_For ever and for ever when I move_

_Ulysses - Lord Alfred Tennyson_

Aniki is slacking, Hiroto thinks, then immediately notices that he, too, is slouching over his motorbike, an after-mentioned smile on his face.

“Oi,” Masaki yelps, “it’s unusual that you’re this cheerful— what is it? A woman? Oh, no, no. Let me guess; because Aniki is with us today _so_ you got all puppy-eyed—”

Hiroto hits Masaki’s shoulder, grimaces. “Tone down that grin a bit. It’s ugly.”

Masaki gasps, baring a hand over his chest. “ _Hiroto-kun_ is being cute again, look at him, Aniki, he’s _pouting_ — ow!”

Aniki takes a drag, smokes moving in waves. He smiles around the clouds. “He is quite a mouthful, isn’t he. Good thing that you’re here.”

“—Aniki!” is the collective answer. Takeru makes a show by frowning, but only for so long.

“Good thing that we are brothers,” Takeru concludes. He gestures behind him, the closed doors of the abandoned building behind them— the people lying on the floor right now with broken spines. “Couldn’t hold a scratch,” Takeru comments, then resumes to his left-over cigarette.

“Pays well, though,” Masaki provides.

Hiroto feels the money from his pocket. “Good business,” Hiroto says, and the three of them reach the point of a collective sigh—a murmured nod. Hiroto lets his thumb graze over the bruise of his cheek. Something is shared between them after fights. Hiroto has only dwelled on it too late.

“How about hot-pot tonight?” Masaki says.

“Sushi,” Hiroto says.

“Hot-pot.”

“Sushi.”

Masaki elbows him, or attempts to. Hiroto dodges it at the last possible second—lazily. Beside them, Takeru exhales, air slipping in between sighs, dissipating as quickly as Masaki set his mind into annoying Hiroto to the fullest. To spar, really, as the sweat dried on Hiroto’s skin by the commotion of the evening’s breeze, his blood-tingling, the fist marred with the blood of one of the group members; he has not bothered to remember the name of the group they just got rid off— Masaki smiles at him, his teeth showing. Oh, Hiroto is ready to ready to spar all right. Masaki seems to notice; the smile makes for a grin.

Hiroto can break all the columns in this lone business street, tear the limbs of every door and its guards, make it all his. Theirs. The wind stirs. Masaki goes into position.

They are about to indulge in some post-mission wrestle when Takeru calls Hiroto’s name. Hiroto stops, turns. Masaki does, too.

“Masaki,” Takeru continues. He isn’t looking at them. He gestures to the sky.

It is a pretty sight, such as almost every night with little light pollution. None of them is the sentimental type. Hiroto looks at Takeru again, in question. In inquiry. Aniki has been acting odd lately.

“Definitely some woman,” Masaki mumbles. Takeru chuckles.

“That’s your best guess?”

Masaki flushes. Or doesn’t. It’s hard to see in the dark. “What?… a man?”

A peal of full-blown laughter, a string that tilts Hiroto’s lips upwards. “Someone gets you some romance, or god forbid, Masaki,” Takeru says, fondly, “your imagination is going to get the better of you.”

“You have been away,” says Hiroto.

A pause. “Yes,” Takeru says.

“Where have you been?”

Masaki says, “Hiroto—"

Hiroto isn’t expecting an answer. Some old, despicable part of him is waiting for a time to strike. A child in him that whines, one that peers over doors silently. _You don’t care. You never answer my questions._ Takeru seems to be one of those secrets that adults have kept from him, that brothers do.

But Takeru answers, “In Nameless Street,” and Hiroto’s rage is left raging in some forbidden corner down the pits of his stomach with nowhere to retrieve.

“Nameless Street?” Masaki asks. “What are you doing in SWORD?”

Hiroto has seen it, the tatters left to burn after MUGEN disbanded. A legend, a hushed whisper in the ears of the authorities. Takeru seems to still—the slight hanging of his mouth that left the smokes utter their clouds. Hiroto dislikes secrets.

Hiroto snaps, “Drop it. If Aniki doesn’t want to tell us, you might as well shove your hand in a tiger’s jaw to get it out.”

It is custom, then, for Masaki to complain about the lack of proper address to _your bother, Hiroto, I’m your_ older _brother_ —familiar, after, to retort back, _you act like you’re born today_ — but Takeru is looking. Takeru is looking at them. He looks and Hiroto is reminded why Takeru Amamiya is the strongest of the Amamiya brothers, and why Hiroto’s arms feel heavy as he crosses them in apprehension.

“I was collecting information,” Takeru says. The night falls quiet; nothing stirs for a time.

“From _there_?” Masaki says. He has shaken off the banter, bit his lips. “That scant little place?”

Takeru smiles, seemingly amused. “You’d be surprised,” he says. “SWORD is growing every day.”

“I’m not talking about SWORD,” Masaki protests. “Nameless Street is in shambles the last time I saw it.”

“It changed,” Takeru says. “RUDE took over.”

“Rude Boys.” Masaki says. He laughs. “Better hope they aren’t rude—haha.”

But Hiroto doesn’t care about SWORD, or Masaki’s stupid humour, or anything else that made Aniki’s eyes brighten like a child. “Why were you there?” Hiroto says. “What information?”

“Watch your tone,” Masaki hushes, his eyes narrowing. Hiroto dislikes secrets.

“What kind of information?” Hiroto says. “What can you possibly find there that we cannot help you with?”

“Hiroto,” Masaki says. Hiroto slaps his reaching hand away. Takeru raises his in the air; calm down, it says. He has done this when Hiroto was a child and wouldn’t stop bruising anyone that crosses his path, his classmates, the playground, where rage has boiled inside and ensnarled him whole— Hiroto doesn’t want to be treated like a child. He shuts up.

“The Nameless Street,” Takeru says, “is a place of worship. You won’t find anything like it in SWORD. It is filthy in the realest sense. There is not one person that doesn’t have dirt in their nails and hunger in their eyes. It feeds from the bones of its victims and leaves none for the birds.” He takes a drag, closes his eyes. “They don’t fly there. They get eaten.”

Hiroto shakes his head. “I don’t care for that—”

“It has changed,” Takeru continues. “A man changed it.”

Hiroto opens his mouth. Closes it. Masaki says, “A man?”

“Yes.”

Masaki is curious. “Have I met him before?”

Takeru extinguishes the light from his cigarette stub, pinching it between his fingers, the left-over ashes uttering their last swirl of air, tobacco-grey. His gaze finds Hiroto’s. “There will be time to meet,” Takeru exhales. Turns to the sky. “Those that seek the same thing,” he says.

Masaki rubs the back of his head, settles between them like some kind of mediator. None of them are.

“So,” Masaki says, a pained smile on his face. Masaki is good at landing a punch and eating and nothing else. “Are we going for the hot-pot?”

Hiroto has never found the sky interesting. When Takeru disappeared the next day with not so much of a word, Hiroto still doesn’t see what was interesting—the stars, the plants, whichever he thinks he sees that day. The sky looks the same, the stars move, slightly, in and away, the position of planets. All of them look the same.

“Where are you going?” Hiroto asks, two months later, when the light on their celling has hurt his eyes. He squints at Masaki, swinging a gulp of beer. “Oi— are you listening?”

Masaki isn’t listening to the news. He is putting on his jacket, looking determined in the stupidest way. A face of a man about to do something reckless, Hiroto thinks. It is Masaki, after all.

“It’s been two months,” Masaki says. “Aniki never goes on without contacting us for two months.”

Hiroto sets the can down with a sneer. “You told me he was busy. You told me to calm down.”

Masaki shrugs a sleeve in. “Well, yeah,” he says, “I’m not fucking calm now, am I.”

“Where are you going?”

“Aw, are you worried? You can be really cute sometimes, y’know, when you’re not busy being rude—”

“Where, Masaki.”

His smile falters. Good. “SWORD,” Masaki says.

Hiroto closes the news station, along with the irritating voice of an impassionate newscaster. Good. “And?”

“What?”

“You are going without me?”

There is relief in Masaki’s words. His brother can get disgusting fast, especially when he looks at him like that. “No,” Masaki says. “Of course not.”

Hiroto grabs his keys and throws them to Masaki. He catches with one hand.

“Then let’s go,” Hiroto says. When he starts the engine, his hands flexing on the handle of his motorcycle, the sky has looked the same, too. Grey and dark and an ugly, ugly thing. Good, he thinks.

“Ne,” Masaki says, the engine roaring to life, the heat slowly dissipating as they stop in front of a terribly barricaded wall, littered in wires and rusted metal, “I know I am smart and never gets my map wrong, but hey. Maybe we got to the wrong place. Nii-chan can get things wrong sometimes.”

“No,” Hiroto says. Beyond the wires is a broken black banter, written in sharp, bold strokes, in Romaji, _RUDE BOYS_. He stops his engine, let his shoes scrap over the ground, feeling its friction. “This is the Nameless Street.”

“I don’t want to park my baby here,” Masaki whines, but does it anyway with a careful pat on his motorcycle’s rear. It isn’t hard to tear off a piece of cheap wire and find your way in. Hiroto supposes that it is not trespassing that is hard, then, treading on pieces of abandoned metal tubes. This place reeks of iron. Blood. People sit at the corners; they appear to be asleep.

Too quiet, is Hiroto’s first thought here. Both Masaki and the night. Sounds came quickly through.

Rags of clothes cover the street. There is so much in his peripheral vision, the dried traces of petrol, piss, the half-hazarded cardboards set to no street signs. The sky is covered. When Hiroto gets the time to look up, they are already a group of ragged, odd-wearing men crouching over the pole stations. Boys, Hiroto reassesses, young men. It is not uncommon. He sometimes forgets that he is young, too.

Masaki’s back touches his. He is going to take those behind. Hiroto relaxes the grip of his fist and takes his time to observes. The moon is behind him. He gets to see those beyond.

“Where is your leader?” Hiroto says. The boys look between themselves and seem to debate about whether to scoff or laugh. The faces of bewilderment are clear. Hiroto tisks. “Don’t make me repeat myself,” he says. “We didn’t get here to talk in this rubbish. We need to see him.”

One boy— a blonde, tall boy—speaks up. Beside him is a red-head. Is this a fashion show? “Like hell, we will! Who are you? Don’t you know where you are?” Another adds, “Do you think we will let you go unscattered?”

Masaki nudges him with his elbow. “We are only here to talk business,” Hiroto hears him say. “We are not here to fight. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

The boy scoffs, then. “ _Hurt_?”

“Well, yeah,” Masaki says, as though it is evident. And it is, Hiroto knows. Masaki can kill any one of them in less time than he is using now to communicate. “Isn’t obvious?”

It is that condescending tone that did it for them, maybe. Masaki is as bad at communicating as Hiroto is. The blonde boy jumps from the station—about five feet high—and lands face to face with Hiroto. The others followed in the same fashion. A flutter of metal rods clinking against others, and suddenly the wasteland is a battlefield, and it is then that Hiroto gains the sense of having threaded in a territory that is foreign, and potentially deadly.

Hiroto stretches his neck, his shoulder moving along the movement. A bunch of monkeys, Hiroto thinks, and smiles at the imminency of a battle to come. He presses his back against Masaki’s and is about to strike. A voice rises. The street stops breathing.

“Takeshi,” it says. A man’s voice. “What is going on.”

The question comes out flat, cold. It isn’t a question, and that man isn’t a boy. The people that have appeared asleep earlier on have stood up, their necks out of their hoods when the man came forward like a turtle out of its shell, some bowing to the figure, a reflection of prayer. Nameless Street is a place of worship, Hiroto remembers. They don’t fly here. They get eaten.

“Takeshi,” the man calls again. The tall, blond boy answers.

“Smoky—"

The man looks at him, his wayward hair making a silhouette over by the light. They have fire as lamplight, man as god, and ice-cold eyes. “What do the Amamiya brothers have business here,” he says. Not a question, again. The man whispers. He doesn’t raise his voice; the entire street falls silent at his every word. The fire keeps crackling.

“Smoky,” the blonde boy—Takeshi—says. “Are you serious? _They_ are the Amamiya brothers?”

“Hey!” Masaki protests. “What the hell’s that tone!”

And Hiroto would be offended, would smile, and teach him exactly why they are a living legend to the SWORD district if it isn’t for the fact that the man is still looking at him. Smoky. It is not a real name; a name reserved for an animal, perhaps, a pet-name, an endearment. Smoky looks; Smoky stares. Being stared by a wild, feral cat. Staring back and feel like a beast, too.

“Hiroto,” Smoky says. “Hiroto Amamiya.”

Masaki has turned around. Hiroto stands face-to-face with Smoky and does not notice. “Eh?” Masaki says. “How would you know?”

Smoky moves his eyes away to Masaki. Hiroto observes the slight turning of Smoky’s eyes, the brown flickers. “Masaki Amamiya,” Smoky says in turn. “I suppose you are looking for your brother.”

“Hah?” Masaki exclaims. He throws his hands in the air, an annoying habit of his when Masaki gets too excited. “So you know who he is, then? I didn’t guess wrong?”

Smoky tilts his head to a building nearby. It looks like any other building here, an abandoned factory, a nuclear wasteland. He walks away, and the residents tuck their clothes closer to themselves, sink their head in their chest, and are asleep once again.

Takeshi frowns. “Go on. Follow Smoky,” he says. ‘I don’t know what connections you guys have or whatever, but if you lay a finger on him— rest assured that we’ll kill you.”

“You will _try_ to kill us,” Masaki grumbles. Takeshi bares his teeth; a red-headed boy has grabbed him by the shoulder. “Just kidding, haha. We won’t do anything to him. Promise,” adds Masaki, and goes to follow the blurry-back of Smoky’s coat, green and gray, the soft spikes of fake-cotton.

So much like the sky, Hiroto thinks, as Takeshi eyes him with every step he takes. The gaze fades after they entered the building, the sound of leaking water dripping over the rusted floor. There are spider webs, thin lines of threads covering the corners of every door, and yet no spiders in sight. No rats would crawl here. Hiroto mounts the stairs and meets what seems like a balcony now, a room before. Explosions have happened, destruction, scraps of building torn away. But Hiroto doesn’t care about that. The leader of RUDE has his arms over the fragile poles, spread them and head tilted up to the sky as though he is going to talk to it. His neck moves; Smoky holds a breath and holds still. And it is beautiful, in a way. Hiroto doesn’t care about that, either.

Hiroto says, “It’s been two months since he went missing.”

Smoky has his eyes closed. Masaki takes a step towards him; Hiroto stretches an arm before Masaki’s chest. “You know where he is,” Hiroto says, still baring Masaki from walking up to the man. There is something peaceful about him, the quiet sea foam, post-torrent. It makes Hiroto angry; the same anger that made him break his classmates’ arms in middle school, then upon graduation, making him move up to the skull.

“Tell me where he is.”

It is cold. When the wind shifts, Smoky’s jacket has exposed a strip of black fabric beneath, a slight figure. “Or what?” Smoky says.

Hiroto can settle this in a fight, he knows. He can settle anything with a fight. Smoky’s figure is lax, his entire body exposed to them, but his arms are tense, and his legs ready to spring at any move. A bird; a cat, opposite from the food chain. Some wild, untamed thing, and suddenly Hiroto wants to break arms again, itching for it like an old unhealed bruise.

Masaki steps up again, this time ignoring the arm in front of him. “Please,” Masaki says, making Hiroto’s head snap at him. “We can buy information.”

“Masaki—”

“Hiroto,” he says, and the lines under his eyes have shocked Hiroto’s rage away. “I just want the three of us to be together again. It doesn’t do good to pick needless fights with SWORD members, you know that. I want to be civil.” He turns to Smoky, who is now staring at them with mild amusement on his face. “To the best extent that I am willing to offer, of course.”

“Yes,” Smoky says. “I understand.”

Masaki spreads out his hands. “So what is it? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Give me your bet.”

Smoky shakes his head. Masaki grimaces, then whispers to Hiroto’s ears, “I swear if he says something like a billion…”

“No charge,” Smoky says. Masaki gasps. It is quite embarrassing. “Everyone in this street is family. I certainly won’t hold people from finding their own, especially if I can help.”

“Really?” Masaki cries. Hiroto will personally murder his brother if he does the extra mile and tries to hug him. “That’s—that’s good. Uh, thank—?”

“Takeru came here two months ago,” Smoky says, not bothering with Masaki’s slim chance at finishing that sentence. Hiroto doesn’t remember a time where Masaki has properly thanked or apologized to anyone; it runs in the family. “He asked me about the Kamizonokai group.”

“Is he chasing after them?” Hiroto asks. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Smoky says. “I simply told him what he asked me to find.”

“What did you tell him?”

Smoky side-eyes him. “That they have a dealing with Shinohara. It’s hard to get anything off them. That was the best we could get.” A beat. “It was for a reasonable price.”

“So you don’t know where he went.”

Smoky says, “You are going after him.”

An inherent question, again. “Of course.”

There is a slight smile as Smoky tilts his head back, to where the wind has stirred again. “Then you will find out. You three are family, after all.”

He closes his eyes again, looking at peace with the sky above him. But Hiroto still wants to talk. He has so much that he needs to know, that he needs to say.

“There is a shortcut if you take the road off west,” Smoky says, a clear dismissal. “Good night, Amamiya brothers.”

Hiroto has his hand trailing after an old dusty handle when he hears him.

“Takeru told me about his brothers,” Smoky’s voice has travelled to the stairs. They stop to listen. “Hiroto. Masaki. There will a time to meet for the Amamiya family, I am sure.”

Hiroto turns back; Masaki takes his hand, shaking his head. “Go,” he mouths.

As Masaki grabs his wrist to drag him out of the Nameless Street with much reluctance from both parties, Hiroto realizes that Smoky must know. Must know where they are parked, the general direction they took, all the roads that have brought them here. _Take the west road; take the shortcut._

A place of worship, Takeru said.

“So he’s the one that Aniki’s seeing,” Masaki observes. He flickers the cigarette alight; he has taken up the habit after Takeru has disappeared. “A protector.”

Hiroto sneers at the sky and starts his engine. He kicks off his motorcycle to the road before Masaki got a chance to follow. Listening to the cries of protests from his brother, Hiroto let his eyes close for a moment, and breathe.

When Hiroto had the entire world sealed inside him and raged with the thoughts of a thousand, he had sought the fallen.

The fallen, his mom called them. _It is sad, isn’t it, those that have no parents? Think about the hardships, Hiroto. Oh, I am so happy that I found another dad for you, and you got those lovely brothers… I’m sure they will teach you great things…_

Hiroto tried to run away, that night. Packed all his things and walked off with no destination in mind. He supposed the destination was _away_ , in his head a direction mapped out with a single line, straight and proper, somewhere far, forlorn, where he can leave the world behind to rot and himself stranger to filth. He was twelve and he was tired and there was a building. Poles crisscrossed against black wires, and Hiroto, with his white shirt and brown soled-shoes, was stranger to it—stranger still was the bag he carried, the money he had shoved in his pocket in haste. Children filled the room; one was carrying bread, broken, dusted with dirt, and a grin that split her face.

A factory. Rotten, used, no one should go inside lest it collapses the next second. He was twelve, really, or he should have known that all used things can be reused again, and waste was occupied by other waste. That was also a word his mom used. _A waste. Oh, those poor kids could be doctors, lawyers… Lucky that I found another dad for you, Hiro_ —

“Who are you?”

In retrospect, Hiroto could not quite understand why he hadn’t recognized Smoky from the first. He had looked exactly like he did those years ago: not quite real, not quite human, in his eyes a sense of supreme pride; ego went missing.

“Who are _you_?” Hiroto asked; because for once he was curious, that this boy in front of him spoke his language, ate the same food, breathed the same air. The fascination was primal, as one became fascinated with a dream, a monster under his bed that he had lied about not believing. “What’s this place?”

The boy frowned. “We don’t have names here,” he said. “This is our home.”

“I—” Hiroto had said. There was a time he didn’t know how to convey rage into fists. “I thought there was no one here.”

The boy—Smoky, he remembered now, of course it was Smoky—said, “Are you abandoned?”

“What?”

The boy coughed. He coughed for a time, then rose a hand to stop the other kids gather around him. “Everyone here is family,” Smoky said wobbly, letting his hand fall away as the crowd dispersed. It listened to him the same way it listens to Smoky now. “If you got nowhere to go, if you want to, you can be family as well.”

Hiroto’s heart skipped a beat, he remembered. He had also found that idea ludicrous. “Family is those that are related by blood,” he said. “Those that aren’t are not family.”

Smoky just looked at him. “Then go,” he said.

“Or else?” Hiroto taunted. He was being treated lightly. It was the worst. “Or else what?”

“Or I will make you. I won’t forgive those who hurt my family.”

“That’s not how it _works_ ,” Hiroto said. He was desperate for something, he knew. He wanted something. He raged again. “No one gets to decide what is family or not— no one gets to tell me who is my family or not!”

“You’re right,” Smoky said. “You get to choose. That’s why I will let you leave.”

“I won’t. So what if I don’t?”

“Then I will make you,” Smoky simply said.

Smoky had already engaged into position, his palms rubbing against each other, his eyes suddenly bright, suddenly fierce.

They fought; such was the natural conclusion of Hiroto’s entire childhood, but it differed from fights at the playground, the taunts and slurs that were thrown at him and spit out in return. Smoky fought with his entire body, dodging as Hiroto clumsily sought for an opening. Smoky wasn’t giving his all, and Hiroto’s fist seemed to be made not to bruise but to touch. In the span of three minutes they had engaged into a kind of half-baked wrestle with Smoky pining Hiroto on the ground, Hiroto had for the first time considered being understood, considered it as a real possibility. As real Smoky was, as real a memory can be.

Smoky was smiling.

“Hiroto?”

Smoky got off him with a jump. He had flushed—or did he? “Takeru,” Smoky said, and his voice had gone soft, wondrous. “You are early today.”

Takeru wasn’t looking at Hiroto; they looked at one person and shared the glance. “Why is my brother with you?”

The voice lost its wonder. “Your brother?”

Hiroto remembered that night. Takeru was there with a handful of bags, with what looked like bento boxes and bread peaking out of plastic bags. He remembered Takeru dragging him home without a word, the stern looks of their parents, her mother’s tears; the night after Takeru had decided to teach him martial arts. But he had forgotten about Smoky, consciously, desperately, like one forgets an overbearing dream.

Hiroto wakes up with Masaki’s naked back facing his window. He stretches, manages to take the water bottle from the nightstand and hitches it towards Masaki’s general direction if only because his brother’s scream is a good way to start the day.

“What are you doing in my room?”

Masaki must be pouting. He looks; he is. “That’s not a way to greet your brother!”

Hiroto stares at Masaki’s stomach. “You need exercise,” he comments. Masaki gasps; an offended “ _that’s so_ _mean_ ” goes his way, with a hurried attempt at putting on clothes.

Hiroto runs a hand over his hair. “Should I repeat my question?”

“Mean,” Masaki is still saying. He flicks Hiroto’s nose, the latter scrunches his nose in distaste. “I was worried about you.”

That is not a word used between them often. “What?”

“I am worried!” Hiroto’s face must have been obvious enough, so Masaki adds, “I don’t know what to do.”

Hiroto gets up, doesn’t bother to turn around to dress. “We got a lead.”

“Well, yes,” Masaki says, his lips in a thin line, “but you understand that they are going to notice if we track them down.”

“They always do. We beat them. Have you gone too old?”

“It’s different this time,” he says. “You know it is.”

Hiroto takes his time. He cranes his neck to the side, to the other. Until Masaki has enough and asks, “Are you listening?” Hiroto says, “We just have to go on a low profile.”

“That’s not what I am worried about!” Masaki cries. “The fact is that we don’t have _enough_ data to get keep our profile low. We have never done this, Hiroto, nothing like this. It concerns Aniki, and I don’t—I don’t want—”

Hiroto puts a hand on his shoulder. Masaki looks up. “Then we will get enough,” Hiroto says. “We will find him.” And he says, just for good measure, “We have promised each other. We won’t lose any family again.”

Masaki made a noise from the back of his throat; it is just a little pathetic. “No,” Masaki says, sniffing. “No, you’re right.” He breaks into a smile. “We are going?”

“Yes,” says Hiroto, and reminds himself to buy breakfast on the road. He is hungry, and he never hunts starved.

To Nameless Street, again.

They are at the pseudo-entrance, broken pieces of wires and bars when an array of cats has gathered to their feet. Hiroto shakes his head, let his hair fall away from his eyes, and hears cries that become clearer by the second.

The cats rub their legs and demand food. The cries of a woman soon become an actual woman running towards them, hitting Masaki by the shoulder as she turns around and yells at the fence who ultimately did not deserve, “Nii-san is mean!”

Masaki is busy rubbing his shoulder blade. “…what?”

Her head snaps back to him, fierce-looking. “ _What_?” She narrows her eyes, startles. “Who are you?” And while Hiroto knows better than to respond, Masaki seems to fall under her general charm of being a woman around his age, and retaliates.

“I am Masaki,” he says, and Hiroto grimaces at the embarrassing suaveness. “And you, my young lady—? Ow!”

She has stepped on his foot, stumbling, snapping her head back to the wires. Footsteps are heard, and the cats keep the noise up to a max.

“Nii-san!”

It is Smoky. In daylight, his figure overlaps, down the smallest moles sprinkled over his nose and neck, with the boy years ago.

“… I told you not to bring cats here, Lala.”

“It’s for the kids! Besides, I promised that I would take care of them so you don’t need to worry…”

“And look at them now,” Smoky says, cold. “They are so hungry that they are begging strangers for—”

His eyes stop in Hiroto’s direction, mouth slightly afar. “Amamiya,” he says.

“What?” the woman says. “Who, o’nii-chan?”

Brother? “I thought we have solved our issues yesterday,” Smoky says. He turns to the girl—his sister, apparently. “Lala, go home.”

“What?”

“Go home,” he says.

“Why?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“I want to stay!”

“It’s not your place to be here.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!”

“Lala,” Smoky says.

She crosses her hands on her hips. “All right,” she says. “I’m going to tell everyone that these people are here, then. I’m sure they would _get_ to have a _place_ in the conversation—”

Smoky’s eyes barely have time to widen before she runs away. Masaki is now looking at Smoky with newfound sympathy.

“Younger siblings, huh,” Masaki commiserates. Hiroto twists Masaki’s arm from behind, just to illustrate the point. 

Smoky closes his eyes. The flock of cats seem to find their leader, moving up to Smoky in pairs. “What do you want? I have told you all that I know.”

“Not _all_ ,” Hiroto says. Masaki gets in front of him, blocking his view.

“Eh,” Masaki says. “We have a little request…”

Smoky crouches down, pulling out of his poorly stitched-pocket a can of cat food. The cats are having a field day. The silence gestures them to continue.

“Just, uh,” Masaki says. He elbows Hiroto. Makes a sorry sign with his hand.

 _Coward_. 

“We want you to come with us,” Hiroto deadpans. Smoky drops the can to the ground; the cats don’t care much about the state of food. Smoky neither.

“Why?”

And it is risky, all of them know it, and odd, to ask a leader of SWORD to join their group, even temporarily. Rumours can start; the stability of SWORD is at hand on these brittle things. But Hiroto is desperate, and he has nothing to lose.

“You know about them better than we do,” Hiroto says. “If we want to stay discreet, the only way is to know everything about Kamizonokai’s territory beforehand.”

“RUDE doesn’t deal with outsiders.”

“You have a map in your head.”

“It’s not a rare thing in SWORD,” Smoky says. “You can find more competent people with more time.”

“That’s the thing. We don’t have _more_ time.”

“Why,” Smoky says simply. “Why me.”

“You know him,” Hiroto says. “You want to find him as much as we do.”

It is a guess, a wild one. Hiroto remembers Smoky’s flushed face in his memories as Smoky has started to walk away. They follow, so much as the cats did, too. “People in Nameless Street do not own anyone anything,” Smoky says fleetingly. “Takeru is a friend. I am willing to help, but I cannot leave this street.”

Takeshi has fallen by Smoky’s side, and soon the same people have circled them anew. Smoky turns to him; Hiroto holds his stare. “I won’t bring much to your mission,” Smoky says, “and I have too much to lose.”

“Smoky?” Takeshi is asking. “What did they tell you to do?”

Smoky shakes his head, says, “Let them go.”

It means, _leave them alone_. It means, _go home_. Smoky from years ago has offered him a family, then let him go when he refused. Today is not any more different. Takeru isn’t here to step in.

Hiroto watches him go.

“God,” Masaki says, “I told you it’s gonna be hard! I mean, it was a sick idea in the first place— oi, where are you going?”

“Hiroto? Oi, Hiroto!—"

Hiroto doesn’t watch him go; he _doesn’t_ want to. Smoky is a faraway thing, a dot in the thick air of the street, and suddenly Hiroto is running, his legs dragging him forward before his mind. He has been running for a long time, Hiroto thinks. Longer than this.

He wants to catch him. He wants something.

His hand feels the wrist of another— the bone beneath. Smoky’s eyes are right in front of him. People around him are talking, behind him Masaki’s voice echoing in the same beat of his heart. It doesn’t matter. Smoky blinks.

This street is dirty, filthy, bright. This street is wide awake.

“…I will heal you.”

Smoky blinks again.

“I will heal you,” Hiroto says, out of breath. He is still holding his wrist. “You are sick, aren’t you? We will go find Aniki and we will cure you— whatever it is.”

“What you’re talking about,” Smoky says. Not a question. He whispers; the street listens.

“You were holding off coughs,” Hiroto says. “Yesterday. You tilt your head up whenever you feel like doing it.”

“No,” Smoky says.

“I have seen you,” Hiroto tries. “You were like this before.”

“Amamiya,” Smoky says, in the same tone he says _Lala_ , the same way he says, _Go home, or I will make you_ , and Hiroto has enough of being treated like a child. “You are threatening me.”

“I am offering a deal,” Hiroto says, letting go of Smoky’s wrist. “At this rate, you will die. You know it.”

Hiroto is waiting for an answer; Smoky will answer. _No_ , he can say. _Go home_. There would be no negotiation. Hiroto’s hands come to rest on his hair self-consciously, flipping it, then touch his lips. He almost takes a step back— a broken voice makes him look. A feet away is an old woman, her face half-burnt. She has hidden her hand in her gown and has burst into tears.

Hiroto doesn’t know where to put his hands.

The street is alive; some wailing, clasping their hands together as though in prayer. They huddled over its leader; a flock of birds is what they remind Hiroto of. The blonde boy has clutched Smoky’s old, over-stretched sleeve. Whispers, murmurs of Smoky’s names. The world seems to open its mouth and _Smoky, Smoky, Smoky;_ it gasps. It wants to cut itself on air, on fumes.

Smoky’s sister has her face in her hands, her shoulders hunched.

“Smoky,” Takeshi starts. “They— they are the Amamiya brothers, aren’t they? Certainly, they can find some cure for—”

“Takeshi,” Smoky says, but he is watching Hiroto. Masaki is, too. “Nameless Street does not welcome bribe.”

“It’s not a bribe,” Hiroto says. “I am offering a service in exchange for another.”

Masaki scoffs slightly, a bit flushed by the suggestion that his brother might even begin to engage in civil conversation rather than a straight dive in the face. “Are you for real?” Masaki hisses at him. The street is spurts, lively, no one is listening to another— in a cesspool of thoughts and cries, Smoky stands there cold.

He hasn’t changed at all, Hiroto thinks. The boy years ago. The kind of man that is stagnant, liquid, resistant to forms. Smoky raises a hand in the air. The street deflates, and the birds stop chirping.

“I am not the only one that has this,” Smoky says. “This… illness. Are you willing to extend the offer to this street…”

Will he just ask a question properly? “Yes,” Hiroto says. Masaki inhales, sharp, but Hiroto doesn’t have time for his brother’s dramatics. “Yes, your family will be treated equally.”

The word _family_ soothes Smoky. When he speaks again, his voice softens. Hiroto leans in; to hear, to see. Smoky’s eyes hide behind stray hairs. Hiroto leans in further.

“I won’t be much help to you,” Smoky reminds him. “What you’re offering is a lot.”

Hiroto almost laughs; he backs away. “Are you complaining about the unfairness of the deal towards _me_? You’re something. Just accept it. We don’t have much time left.” He used _we_ , he realizes. “We need to go soon.”

A gust of wind. Smoky coughs and coughs and coughs. His sister has a hand on his back; the tears have already dried on her face, leaving streaks of them, light, almost pretty.

“Please,” she says. “Please, o’nii-chan.”

Smoky heaves, his hunched back the only thing Hiroto sees. Blood splatters on the ground. Takeshi is on the other side of him; the entire street encloses on him, moving like vultures, encircling Smoky alive.

Smoky raises a hand. Takeshi takes a step back, and the world takes a hint.

“Meet me tomorrow,” Smoky says, heaves. “At the entrance.”

A pause. “You know where it is,” Smoky says. He asks. The tilt at the end, the frazzled accent. It makes Hiroto leans in and in and in.

Smoky asks. He smiles. “You know it. Don’t you, now?”

“Hiroto,” Masaki says as soon as they left, a sheen of sweat dragging across his forehead down his neck. “Oi, are you listening?”

“No,” Hiroto says. “What do you want?”

The floor bends when Hiroto tilts his back against the motorcycle. The oval mirror reflects his frown, the bridge between his brows. What, are you mad? Takeru has asked him on his birthday. His parents were discussing his gifts, cutting the cake, whatever that parents do on their child’s birthday. Your face, Hiroto, Takeru said.

“You look pale,” Masaki says. He looks like Takeru; he looks like his classmates. The fleeting glances. Your face is pale, Takeru had said.

“What I did,” Hiroto says, “what I did, it wasn’t a mistake.”

Masaki hesitated before putting a hand on his shoulder. “Of course not!” he says. “I mean, you have potentially imbalanced the entire SWORD district by making RUDE’s leader work for us—but only temporarily!” Hiroto sees him grin, unnerved by his glance. “But you have always been like this, haven’t you? It’s like not you like to run away from trouble more than you like running straight into them with open arms—"

Hiroto almost sighs. “Masaki?”

Masaki’s mouth hangs open, in the middle of a half-word. “What?”

“Shut up.”

He doesn’t, of course. “Come on—you have met Smoky before, haven’t you? He seems like the kinda guy that lurks in a dead building somewhere, and you liked dead buildings, so it’s not like you didn’t want trouble in the first place—”

“He will help us,” Hiroto says. “We need him more than he needs us.”

Masaki laughs. “Have you heard how he coughs? It’s probably not wrong to call that terminal. He needs help, and my cute brother was kind enough to offer it… though are you sure that can be treated? Rude Boys will have our neck if you don’t, not that we can’t beat them in one shot, of course…”

Masaki raves on; he hardly does that, despite being a pest from time to time. It is a stressful day. Hiroto isn’t listening, and _that_ Hiroto does daily. Masaki chuckles at a joke he makes. They settle back into their seats and drive back home.

That isn’t it. Smoky doesn’t need help and Hiroto isn’t kind, but he would have to explain why that isn’t it, and it would require explaining things that Hiroto doesn’t fully know or understand. The sky strikes a bright purple. Smoky’s eyes would trail over that cloud, the one that is slowly fading into another. The clouds swirl together, and Hiroto parks his motorcycle to shake his hair clean. 

They spend a night with two cans of beer and leftover rice and chicken that the lady below has given them. She cooks too much for her five children. You two need to eat more, she says, and often would pretend that she didn’t specifically make food for them. The bottle of milk sits in their fridge; one of her children is lactose intolerant, she explained.

Masaki shoves him a backpack after dinner. It hits him right unto his stomach; Hiroto unzips it; peers inside.

“Uh,” Hiroto says. “Cats can’t drink milk, you know.”

“What? They don’t?”

“No,” Hiroto says, pulling out the milk and settle it on the table. “Also. My clothes inside. Why.”

“It’s not like you wear them in the first place.”

“Answer my question.”

Masaki scratches the back of his head. “Well, Smoky-kun’s not gonna walk around in his—jacket thing and not get recognized, right? So I thought, you know, um…”

Masaki shuffles his feet. Hiroto zips the bag back. “Okay,” he says.

“Eh?” Masaki looks up. “Really? It’s okay?”

He shrugs. “Old clothes, anyway. Have you washed them?”

“Oh,” Masaki says. “I, uh, forgot.”

“ _Masaki_ ,” Hiroto says. They look at each other. A laugh slips past him, then Masaki, too. It must be a long time since they laughed like that.

“Go to sleep,” Masaki says, his laughter eventually evening out into a sigh. He clasps his shoulder. “Tomorrow we will find him, yeah?”

He means Takeru. He means Smoky. Somewhere in his head tells him that it doesn’t matter. Smoky perching on the dull rusted balcony, his breathing clear, limpid to the evening air. Takeru saying there will be a time to meet. Hiroto’s hands under his head, staring up at the ceiling, and imagines a boy with a stern face, and bright, bright eyes.

Go home, they say to him. Hiroto goes to sleep.

Smoky is waiting for them at the entrance that is now familiar. The cats, too.

“They followed me here,” Smoky explains. “I told them not to come.”

“Told them?”

“Yes,” Smoky says, his face too serious for the subject of the conversation. “They don’t listen.” Hiroto dares Masaki to laugh. A cat yawns and butts her head on Smoky’s ankle.

Masaki grins. “Say, this street is going to okay, right?”

“They are competent without me,” Smoky says. “I have prepared them for this. In case I go missing.”

Smoky’s voice is flat, cold. It isn’t _missing_ that he meant and it irks him. Hiroto tosses Smoky a helmet. “We are going,” he says, then tosses him the backpack. “Put this on before the helmet.”

Smoky peers inside. “These are your clothes.”

“Your jacket is too noticeable.”

“And leather jackets aren’t,” Smoky says.

“And I am not a gang leader,” Hiroto counters. They remain silent, staring until Smoky takes off his jacket, then his shirt. He doesn’t even bother turning around.

Hiroto’s clothes suit him annoyingly well. There’s just one thing.

“Come here,” Hiroto beckons. Smoky does.

His hair is too messy, curls falling all around. Hiroto runs his hands to it, styling them the best he can. There is a mole under his left eye, Hiroto notices. Smoky stands there, his eyes glancing down, unmoving.

“Hiroto?”

It is Masaki. Somehow Hiroto’s hands have stopped moving, too. They remain on Smoky’s hair, sliding up. Hiroto takes a step back.

“We are going,” he says.

Smoky’s hands close against the helmet. “Where.”

Hiroto balls his hand into a fist; hits the helmet Smoky is holding. The sound rattles softly. “You are going to tell us,” Hiroto says. “You are going to tell us all that you know.”

“I have already told you.”

“I meant leading,” Hiroto snaps. “Lead us to the Kamizonokai group.”

He can’t see Smoky’s face through the helmet, but he must be smiling. His eyes are so bright. “Makes things easier,” Smoky says.

“We don’t have much time.”

Masaki clasps Smoky’s back, grabs his arm. “Don’t listen to my grumpy brother. C’mon, you can sit with—”

“You drive too fast,” Hiroto blurts out. “I will carry him.”

Masaki blinks. “Oh, okay.” He releases Smoky’s arm. Smoky promptly sits behind him, his hands settling on the edge of his seat.

“He drives pretty fast!” Masaki cries from the front, already starting the engine. “Grab his waist or you’re going to fall!”

And Smoky did. Down, Hiroto can see the half-covered hands encircling his stomach, the light whisper of fingers against the fabric.

“Hold tighter,” Hiroto says.

Smoky does. “I still haven’t told you the location yet…”

“We are going to another place before that.”

“Where—"

“The convenience store,” Hiroto says, and they hit the road. Cats are mewling after them. Hiroto has left a box of leftover chicken near the entrance. So that they will leave them alone, Hiroto thinks. _Him_. Leave _him_ alone.

“ _Oumaii_?” Smoky squints at the label. He turns the packet in his hands, turns it again. Turns to them, eventually. He frowns. “…what.”

“Nothing,” Masaki says. His face is getting redder with the visible effort to not laugh. “Hiroto’s clothes suit you, that’s all. You, uh, want to buy the onigiri?”

Smoky is at once fascinated with the package, almost cradling it. “ _Nigi_.” He points at the kanji. “Not _ya_ …”

“They look similar,” Hiroto says while Masaki tries to explain by writing the two kanji in the air. “It’s good. Try it.”

Smoky shakes his head, sets it down on the counter. “Tell me why we are here.”

Hiroto silently puts the onigiri in the chart. “Provision,” Masaki says, facing them by walking backwards. “Hiroto and I like to do that before a mission. Helps with time management and everything. Also, instant ramen is really good.”

Smoky is walking with him, side-by-side, with his clothes that he agrees to put on before leaving the RUDE area, lest people of SWORD recognize him. Dressed black from head to toe, somehow Smoky seems to turn more eyes than before. Especially in the store.

Especially with the cashier.

“I have never seen you around,” she says. It takes Smoky a few seconds before looking up. “What’s your name?”

Smoky just stares. To the point where she chuckles and says to Hiroto. “You guys got a shy one for me, huh.”

“Yui,” Masaki whines. “Stop it…”

“C’mon,” she says, making her way to Hiroto, winking. “What’s his name?”

There is not much customer at six in the morning. Smoky is glancing his way, too.

“Kiyoshi,” Hiroto says.

“Ah,” Smoky says, connecting the dots. “Yes?”

Hiroto gestures Masaki, who promptly pays as he drags Smoky to the exit, with the girl crying after them, “Nice to meet you, Kiyoshi-kun!”

“What was that,” Smoky says. Hiroto lets go of his hand.

“Yui. A little annoying.”

“No,” Smoky says. “Why did she ask my name.”

“She—” Hiroto begins. Masaki interrupts with his fifteen bags of food and a pouting face.

“Hey! Don’t just leave me alone! She wanted to know Smo-kun’s phone number—I had to run away! Now, can you _please_ help o’nii-chan with those bags…”

“Phone number,” Smoky says. Hiroto can see the question marks above his head.

Masaki crosses his arms in indignation, each arm dangling ten bags worth of weight. “Yeah, I mean, I understand that Yui flirts with anything that moves except me, but it’s the first time I have seen her ask for the phone—”

“Flirts,” Smoky wonders out loud. Masaki finally stops confusing Smoky further by shutting his mouth. His eyes meet Hiroto’s.

“He doesn’t understand,” Masaki says, in awe. “That’s… kinda cute.”

Smoky looks like he’s trying to solve a particularly hard math problem. “Cute,” Smoky repeats dumbly. “What are you talking about.”

“Okay, okay!” Masaki says, digging deep in the bag. “Eat and talk later, all right?” He tosses the package to Smoky; his eyes widen at the sight of the onigiri.

“…you didn’t have to,” Smoky says, a little sheepish. “And what are you having…”

“Jian-jian!” Masaki presents him with two bentos, lets Hiroto catch the sushi one. He gestures to the space nearby, the oak tree. “Usually we eat there,” he says. “Aniki likes to smoke rather than eat, of course, but—”

Masaki stops. He grins instead. It’s even more annoying when he fakes it. “Let’s go,” Masaki says.

Hiroto stays with Smoky. They watch Masaki walk away. They will follow, Hiroto knows, feeling words quietly hit on the soft palette, unspoken. Smoky will speak, he knows that, too.

“Masaki is just as sentimental as he told me,” Smoky comments. They both know who is the he Smoky is referring to.

Hiroto snorts. “Did he say anything about me?”

“Yes,” Smoky says. He takes a step, then another. “Let’s go,” he says, and he walks away, too. Spring at his step, yet rooted to the ground, Hiroto watches. He has to move. He will move; the only way forward is through.

“Wait,” Hiroto says. Smoky turns; looks at him. Hiroto walks to him slowly, keeping his steps light; he is in no rush. Somehow he knows Smoky will wait for him. Smoky _is_ waiting for him, now, and the certainty of the present is something that Hiroto has never really considered before.

They walk up to Masaki who is already on the grass, his grin real and bright. “Wait, wait,” Masaki says, fumbling with the bags. “I bought a map.” Sometimes Hiroto thinks that Masaki’s got some kind of coordination problem.

Masaki lays out the map on the fresh-out grass. They gather around it. It reminds Hiroto of a picnic, then it occurred to him that he had never attended one. An idea of a picnic, of gathering.

Smoky hesitates to open his onigiri. Sunlight filters through the thick, grey clouds; the sun is before them at once.

“Eat it,” Hiroto says without looking, picking one sushi from the plate. “We are going to throw it away if you don’t.”

“Really.”

“None of us likes what you’re eating.”

Masaki must realize that it is a lie; Hiroto just hopes he isn’t thick enough to not notice Smoky’s shoulder visibly relax, his eyes resting on the package with renewed curiosity.

“Are you not hungry?” Masaki asks.

“Not really,” Smoky says quickly; an automated response.

“Aw, c’mon! Try it, try it!”

“I…”

“It’s good,” Masaki reassures. Smoky nods; Masaki gives Hiroto a discreet thumbs-up behind his back.

Smoky hides half of his hands into his sleeves when he eats, Hiroto notices. It is a truth, a remark like anything else, something without real substance. The sky is blue, the grass is green, Smoky is eating with his sleeves over his hands, his eyes intense and focused on the rice, his body contorting in a way that makes it close to his chest. A cat, his mind calls upon the similarity, then Hiroto punishes it by shutting down blind.

Hiroto turns his head aside and reaches for the drinks. He grimaces when he sees the label and almost throws it at Masaki right away.

“ _Cherry soda_? What are you, Masaki, twelve?”

“You’re being extra-mean today!” Masaki exclaims, further proving Hiroto’s point when he snatches away the can as Hiroto shakes his hands in disgust. “It’s for Smoky.”

“I don’t drink alcohol,” Smoky says, sounding apologetic. He has finished his food, aware of his surroundings once again. “They have asked me to drink in a SWORD meeting. It didn’t go well.”

“Don’t mind Hiroto-kun,” Masaki interrupts, “he’s just mean!”

“Sorry.”

“…it’s fine.”

“Sorry,” Smoky says. “I didn’t mean—”

“I said _it’s fine_.”

Smoky nods. There is not much expression on his face. They keep the silence until Masaki waves the map in front of them in a valiant attempt at breaking it. Smoky points out the Kamizonokai base and whispers instructions on how the roads can be taken and negotiate plans of escape routes— his tone as still as stagnant, dull reflection of a lake glanced from above. Hiroto listens; Masaki adds to the conversation, his voice light _how about here, though? I don’t want us to separate when we infiltrate, so isn’t it better to take the left road—eh?_

“—Eh? Where are you going, Hiroto?”

Hiroto is a child again, his hands heavy with luggage, with no destination in mind. “Away,” he says. “Give me a moment.”

Smoky comes to him with an ice pop in hand.

“Pi used to run away like that from time to time,” Smoky says. “He would cry when he thinks no one notices.”

“The red-head?”

Smoky smiles, like one gently mocks their child for tripping on the sidewalk. “He’s recognizable.”

“I am not crying,” Hiroto says. He looks at the melting ice pop. “Where’s yours?”

“Ah,” Smoky says. Hands him the purple popsicle; grape favour is hardly Hiroto’s favourite. “I ate mine.”

“Liar.”

“Sorry. Reflex.”

“Don’t you think that they would know that you’re lying all this time?”

“It’s just food.”

“Then tell me how bad it is,” Hiroto says, taking a bite off the ice. Not his favourite favour, really. “Your illness.”

“They will live.”

"That is not what I am asking."

"It is for me."

“Aniki,” Hiroto begins. The popsicle is melting under his tongue; the sun is on its way up the sky. Smoky doesn’t look like he belongs here, in a parking lot, the sun streaming down his face so cleanly. He is so much like his brother, in spirit, in image, in all the ways that do not matter. Smoky is Smoky; that sentence makes sense in his head, the forlorn instinct of an animal. Hiroto feels like one, with him. “Takeru. Why does he know you?”

“You were there. He saw. He took pity in me, in my family. Sometimes he brings food.”

Hiroto shakes his head. He is talking about the way Takeru talks about Smoky, his face softening to a glow. The way Hiroto’s hands trembled when Takeru looks at him the same. “He considers you his sibling,” Hiroto says.

“He might. He is family to me.”

“You love your family.” That word dried on his tongue. Hiroto takes another bite.

“Yes.”

“Do you even know what it means?”

“Masaki went to smoke,” Smoky says.

“He doesn’t smoke.”

“Takeru does,” Smoky says. “There is the meaning. There is a meaning."

The ice pop has melted faster than Hiroto can finish it. The liquid sticks his fingers. Hiroto laughs. “Of love?”

“This can be my last mission,” Smoky replies unsteadily, his voice starts to stutter, the upcoming signs of a coughing fit. “I don’t mind it.”

“Is that love,” Hiroto deadpans, flickering the popsicle stick off his hand. “Do you love him?”

“You would know,” Smoky says; he smiles weakly. “You love him.”

Smoky starts to cough. Hiroto’s hands are unclean, sticky, tainted an artificial purple. He puts a hand on his back, the other on his face. Smoky’s eyes are shut, as though concentrating on getting all the blood out of his body. When Hiroto takes his hand off, there is a streak of purple. A bruise, almost. How many of them are hidden on his body? A mess of limbs and scars and bruises. He might just die.

Hiroto holds him. He might have kissed him. He might have even said so, if Smoky doesn’t already know. Like Takeru, Hiroto thinks, and love makes full circle. 

“You will live,” Hiroto says instead. “We will find him.”

“I want to live,” Smoky says. In time, he will breathe, too.


End file.
